


Your Ex-Lover is Dead

by strangestquiet



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2018-12-25 09:13:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12032796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangestquiet/pseuds/strangestquiet
Summary: With nowhere else to go for help after Chorus, Locus tracks down Siris, who has become a powerful crime boss in the years since they parted ways.





	1. Marcus

_Only one of you needs the other_ _to survive_ , the AI had said, and despite all available evidence, Locus still catches himself wondering which one of them it meant.

He can fight, shoot, _survive_ as well on his own as he ever did with a partner, that much he knows. But Felix had been the talker, the charmer, the crowd control -- all skills Locus had utterly lacked when they were younger and had only marginally improved in recent months out of necessity.

Evidently he’ll have to add gambling to that list, he thinks, as he stares a hole through the hand of worthless cards he’s been dealt. Tonight could have been profitable.

No bluff he’s capable of making will turn his fortunes around, but having to fold gives him time to glance across the crowded, smoke-filled backroom of the club, to the door along the back wall where a bouncer is talking to someone via his earpiece and pretending not to stare in the direction of Locus’ table. He averts his eyes and turns his attention back to the game. No doubt that’s security notifying their boss about the counterfeit money he’d put up at the door. Took them long enough to notice.

To their credit, they have the sense to wait until the game is over before they pick him up. The moment he pushes his chair out from the table and gets to his feet, two broad-shouldered men in matching black muscle shirts and earpieces block his exit. Locus cocks an eyebrow and grumbles an obligatory, “Is there a problem?” before one of the men takes him by the upper arm and the other clears a path for him to be swept away through the crowd and out the back door of the gambling hall.

On the other side of the door is a cramped concrete foyer with an emergency exit on one side and a set of stairs leading further down on the other, lit only a sputtering fluorescent light bulb and the small red dot of a security camera in the corner next to it. Locus looks up and offers the camera as clear a view of his face as possible, and then lets the men drag him down the stairs and into the basement.

The tiny storage room he’s taken to contains only a few crates pushed against the far wall, a spare card table, and some steel folding chairs. “Hands where I can see them,” says one of the bouncers, who then frisks him for weapons. He finds nothing, so he kicks one of the chairs out from the table and shoves him down into it, eliciting only a quiet grunt from Locus. He prefers to stay quiet and observant in these situations; it’s absurdly simple to work out people’s anxieties and weaknesses while their attention is focused elsewhere, while Felix talks and _talks_ and gets them so wound up they can’t focus, and then, when the timing is right--

_(“We have our orders. Right, partner?”)_

The bouncer who searched him gathers a fistful of his tie and dress shirt, pulls back, and punches him across the mouth, splitting open his lower lip and knocking him down toward the dirty concrete floor, covered in sawdust and old blood. He spits a little more onto it from his busted lip, and fights down the ingrained urge to strike back.

No killing. What would Felix do in this situation? Right. _Talk_.

“Technically I _lost_ money,” Locus deadpans as he straightens his back and regains his composure. “I don’t understand what the fuss is about.”

He braces himself for another punch. The bouncer pulls back his fist to oblige him, but is halted by a rapid fire knock on the door. The other bouncer who’d hung back opens it, and a third man enters. He’s young, serious and sharp-eyed, wearing expensive-looking glasses and a dark, expertly tailored suit. Every carefully crafted inch of him screams _money_ , and Locus holds his tongue, confident now that his plan has worked: without a doubt, this is the man he came here to see.

“I’d rather not be here all night, so let’s keep it brief,” says the young boss, with the kind of quiet authority of someone used to getting what he wants without asking twice. He waves away the goon still holding Locus by his shirt collar, who backs off immediately. “Imagine you’re me, and three days ago someone robs one of your counterfeiting operations to the tune of two hundred grand. Now imagine a stranger shows up at one of your clubs out of nowhere, waving around exactly half that much cash in counterfeit bills.” He shrugs. “What would your conclusion be?”

Locus wets his lips and tastes copper. “I’d think that person is either extremely stupid… or he’s trying to get my attention.”

“That’s what I thought. I guess that rules out _extremely stupid_ , then.” The boss leans down toward him, just far enough for emphasis without placing himself within reach. “So? You’ve got my attention _and_ all your fingers. Tell me where the other half of my fucking money is before you lose both.”

“I’m a friend of your father’s,” says Locus. “I need to speak with him.”

“I know who the fuck you are, Ortez,” replies Marcus Wu. “ _Friend_ is a generous word.”

Locus sets his mouth in a firm line in response to his heart leaping up into his throat. He’d come prepared to suffer Siris’ wrath, but he hadn’t honestly considered he might not survive his son’s first. This could be a problem. “I… owe him an apology,” he admits. “But that’s between us. Set up a meeting and I’ll return the rest of your money.”

“You’re in no position to make demands.”

“I disagree. Does your father know the money’s gone yet?” Locus waits for his suspicion to be confirmed, which it is the moment Wu’s lip curls up in a deep scowl. “I see. He’ll be disappointed in you when he finds out. That means you need me to tell you where it is, or else you’d already be dumping my body in the harbour.”

“There’s still plenty of time for that.”

“But then you’ll never get that money back.” Locus tilts his head, considering. “Or… you could get me a meeting with your father, and he never needs to know it was gone.”

If this were any other crime family, he’d be less brazen here; painful lessons from that debacle with the Lozanos almost twenty years ago still loom in his mind. But Wu could not be more different than the younger Lozano -- everything he learned from his research has suggested his relationship with his father is one of mutual respect and admiration. He’s calm, calculating, and smart enough to recognize that inheriting his father’s empire one day means behaving professionally to secure its survival. There’s no using him as bait or leverage: the Wu family’s loyalty lies solely with each other, and if Locus wants to get close, he needs to lay all his cards on the table, bare his face, and show he has nothing to hide.  

After a long moment of consideration, Wu sighs deeply, turns to his subordinates, and says, “If he moves, shoot his kneecaps off,” and then he exits the room.

They hold him in the basement longer than is strictly necessary, until the metal folding chair becomes excruciatingly uncomfortable and he starts to wonder if maybe he hasn’t seen the last of this blood-stained floor. But close to an hour later the door cracks open and Wu re-enters, motioning for Locus to get up.

“Looks like your luck has turned around, Mr. Ortez,” says Wu, and he hands him a small business card: solid black with the club’s logo stamped in the centre, an Eye of Horus etched in gold ink. He flips it over and reads an unfamiliar address on the back, hand-written in pen. “Meet there tomorrow, 4:00pm. Bring the money.”

Wu leaves without waiting for confirmation.  Locus tucks the card into a pocket in the lining of his suit jacket, and the bouncers lead him up the stairs to the concrete foyer, where one of them opens the emergency exit and the other shoves him unceremoniously out into the sub-zero spring night and slams the door behind him.

 _Only one of you needs the other_ _to survive,_ said the AI, and Locus knows it was right. But that doesn’t stop him from looking up at the light-polluted night sky, searching for a planet the galaxy forgot, and thinking that Felix probably would have enjoyed that a lot more.

  


* * *

 

 

For the sake of his own sanity he shouldn’t delineate his life into _before_ and _after_ Felix, but he doesn’t know how else to make that distinction now.

The _before_ is difficult enough. He has hazy memories of life before the war, feelings and images that have since been partially overwritten by terror and violence, by atrocities committed and suffered in measures not always equal. But there _was_ a before, a life that belonged to him alone, even if he can never go back to it. The _after_ , though...

The _after_ is impossible. There is no way to approach his new life from a frame of reference that does not include Felix, that does not begin with the sight of his body smashed against the rocks at the foot of the comm tower on Chorus. So he doesn’t try. And so Felix follows him wherever he goes, an absence too wide to paper over, too deep to fill, but he refuses to think of it as _missing him_. He doesn’t miss Felix. He misses having a partner like he’d miss the scope of his rifle, like he’d miss his own arm if it were severed from his body. But Felix is less a phantom limb than a rotten tooth, something he’s better off without even if he can’t stop running his tongue over the gap where it used to be.

Pretending there’s a distinction between the thing he lost and the disease that rotted it away is the only thing that allows him to keep moving.

 _Moving_ has so far led him to Tribute, one of the easiest places in the galaxy to lay low and disappear among the rapidly expanding population. He has a safe house here, a sparsely furnished, second-floor bachelor apartment on the edge of Casbah, not far from the shipyards, where absent tenants were assumed to be migrant labourers and raised fewer questions. The unit door is accessible only via a narrow staircase from the ground floor, suicide for any attacker stupid enough to approach that way, and his sniper rifle sits ready beside the only window he hasn’t boarded up, the one with a clear view of the back lot. There are supplies stashed everywhere: knives in drawers, handguns under loose floorboards, cash behind a broken tile in the bathroom, just in case.

 _Jesus, you’re even more paranoid than I thought,_ had been Felix’s assessment the first time he’d stayed here, and then he’d made a face as he pulled a jar of white powder from the cupboard. _This sugar or am I putting anthrax in my coffee?_

Locus had ignored the jab, and all the other ones in the years that followed. _Paranoid_ was fine. _Paranoid_ had been keeping them alive since the war, and with any luck, it would continue to protect him from Malcolm Hargrove.

Hargrove’s arrest by the UNSC had spelled the end of Chorus’ bloody civil war, but even in custody he’s a powerful man, able to exert his influence via proxies and corrupt officials. He is alive, confined, and utterly furious at the mercenaries who’d failed to secure his investment in the planet -- and with Felix dead, that fury is coming down squarely on Locus’ shoulders. To date, three months after Chorus, Hargrove’s vengeance has manifested as mysteriously empty bank accounts and the firebombing of the Pelican he’d stolen on his escape, leaving him stranded on Tribute for the foreseeable future. He has no doubt his safe house will meet the same fate if he doesn’t get off this planet soon.

With no money, no ship, and a dangerous, vengeful enemy dogging his steps, he has nowhere else to go for help but to Siris.

He memorizes the address on the back of the card he’d received from Marcus Wu and then burns it to ashes on the ancient stove in the kitchen. A cursory internet search on his burner phone turns up a Greek restaurant at that corner, though it’s impossible to know how recent that data is. Tribute is undergoing a renewal of sorts. It had survived a partial glassing near the end of the war and is now emerging from its own ashes, rebuilding at a breathtaking pace, billboards and businesses tearing down as fast as they go up, as the people here figure out what they want their new lives to look like. Casbah’s shipyards had won contracts to rebuild a substantial portion of the decimated UNSC fleet, which means plenty of new money and new residents -- and all the criminal activity that goes with them -- are flooding its markets these days.

Locus was not surprised to learn this is where Siris has been thriving for the last few years. What _had_ surprised him was that he’s thriving not as a mercenary, but as the head of an extraordinarily powerful mafia family.

It’s desperation that drives him to seek assistance from Siris, but he can’t help but nurture a more personal curiosity as well. In their bounty hunting days, Siris and Felix had often been at odds with regard to their targets and tactics, with Locus playing exasperated peacekeeper from the middle ground. If they skirted too close to real danger, to breaking laws that would almost certainly get them caught, Siris would be the first to rein them back in. He had things he couldn’t afford to lose -- a wife and child, a life outside their work -- while Felix and Locus had no such attachments beyond each other. Siris had chosen this life, but they had simply relapsed into the only thing they knew how to do after leaving the military. They’d been trained to fight, bleed, and kill for the survival of humanity and found no gratitude or respite on the other side; their turn from soldiers to bounty hunters to mercenaries had been almost laughably predictable.

But Siris wasn’t like them, and that had never been more apparent than on the day they’d finally parted ways. Locus can’t help but wonder what had happened. People don’t just _change_ that easily. Not even on Tribute.

The sun won’t be up for another hour at this time of year but Locus is already prepared to leave. His weapons are the last of his belongings to be packed; he’d rather not have anything confiscated by over-eager security, so he’ll need to put his things in storage before meeting with Siris. He loots every one of his hiding spots for weapons and money, disassembles his rifle with practiced ease, and packs all of it away in his bag. A knife goes into his boot, and a spare pistol he can afford to lose gets tucked into his waistband at his back, hidden beneath a bulky, insulated winter jacket.

And then all that’s left is the sword.

He rolls the inactive hilt between his fingers, thinking. He should pawn the thing. Sold to the right buyer, an alien artifact from a distant world would solve his financial problems in a heartbeat. And yet...

_(In his nightmares he tries to activate the sword and it doesn’t respond. He stands rooted to the spot at the edge of the comm tower, legs weighed down by inert power armor, jamming the switch over and over as nothing happens. A hand falls heavy on his shoulder--_

_“We’re partners. We_ need _each other--”_

 _\-- and Felix is there beside him, as always, an anchor that stops his wounded mind from straying back to blood and bombs but never, ever too far from him. And then the knife sinks into his side before he can stop it, into the gap beneath his chestplate, piercing through the undersuit and into his lung. He gasps wetly and spatters the inside of his helmet with blood. Felix catches him when his legs give out and he sags against his armor, and then they walk, step by step toward the edge of the tower. Locus knows what’s happening, knows they’re going to fall into hell together like they should have, and part of him is_ relieved _but part of him still wants to fight, still thumbs the switch of the sword in his hand, again and again and_ again--

_He wakes drenched in sweat and nearly hyperventilating, every muscle coiled tight as if expecting an attack. He kicks away the blankets tangled around his legs and tumbles out of bed and then tears apart his belongings, and when he finds the sword, he clutches it tight and thumbs the switch. He closes his eyes and lets the heat and light of the blue-white plasma blade pulse against the backs of his lids. The terror subsides and relief rushes in to fill the space, turning his bones to water, and he slumps to the floor and stays there until he stops shaking, until the relief hardens into a cold, aching knot in the pit of his stomach at the confirmation that he is alone.)_

He should pawn it, but he won’t. He needs the reminder of what he survived, and what he lost, and that the thing following in his shadow can only hurt him if he lets it get too close.

When he’s ready, he slings his bag over his shoulder and takes one last look around. He finds his eyes lingering in certain places: the ratty sofa pushed against the wall; the old bloodstains soaked into the wooden floorboard; the cupboard where he keeps the sugar. Something in his chest tightens like a closed fist, and he turns and leaves before it has the chance to open and let whatever’s clutched inside it escape. He doesn’t bother to lock the door behind him; regardless of what happens today, he won’t be coming back.

Hargrove has taken everything from him. He might as well have this, too.


	2. Megan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wound is sewn up, and it's kinda gross, though not nearly as gross as all the stuff I saw googling how to sew up wounds.

The fundamental weakness of their partnership, Locus realized too late, was that they had designed it to guard against external threats, to be a weapon and a shield to protect themselves from the enemies they were likely to make hunting criminals for money. It was an effective short-term arrangement, but its success required an ironclad trust between the three of them, a belief in a shared loyalty that, in truth, had never existed. What Locus had failed to grasp at the time was that each of them had something he valued above the group, that he would always choose when the gun was held to his head, and when those things came into conflict, the ensuing collapse was inevitable.

The only one of them who had fully understood this fact was Felix.

As soon as Locus gives the all-clear confirming they aren’t being tailed, Siris pulls off the road and parks alongside the guardrail overlooking the frozen harbour and the glittering cityscape beyond it. He shuts off the car, and the sudden silence of the engine sets Locus’ nerves on edge, sensing a danger he can’t yet identify.

“Why are we stopping?” Felix’s nose is still buried in the dossier they’d just collected from their informant, but he voices Locus’ concern anyway, as he so often does. He doesn’t look up until Siris snatches the dossier out of his hands and tosses it into the back seat with Locus. “Hey, what the fuck?”

“We need to call off this job,” says Siris.

Felix’s derisive laughter comes sharp and swift, but when Siris doesn’t join in, it dies just as quickly. “Uhh... _why?_ This guy’s dumb enough to think hiding out on the top floor of a highrise is a good idea. This’ll be the easiest job we’ve had in months.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to wonder why no one _else_ has nabbed this ‘easy’ bounty yet?” Siris taps his phone and pulls up a map of the area where their quarry is hiding, drawing a square around the apartment complex with a finger. “Look where the building is. Everything in this district is either protected or owned by the Mercado family, and I mean _everything_.”

“So what?”

“So they’re _mafia,_ is what. Small-time gangs are one thing, but organized crime is... a hydra. If we go barging in there and leave evidence behind, we’re marked men for the rest of our very short lives.”

“You’re kidding me,” says Felix, and when Siris’ only response is a flat glare, he exhales a helpless, exasperated breath. “For fuck’s sake, Wu. We can’t keep dropping targets every time you get spooked. Some of us aren’t married to lawyers.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“I’m just _saying_ , Locus and I don’t have that dual-income luxury, okay? We don’t work, we don’t get paid.” As if suddenly reminded that Locus is still in the car despite his stony silence, Felix twists around in his seat and looks to him for help. “C’mon, Sam, back me up here. We need this.”

Locus shifts his gaze from Felix’s frustrated expression to Siris’ wary reflection in the rearview mirror and then back again, reluctant to provoke the kind of argument he’ll have to hear about for the rest of the night. But they’ve backed him into a corner now, and they expect him to weigh in. “Siris is right,” he replies at last. “Mafia won’t come at us from where we can see them. They’ll make it hurt.”

It isn’t the first time he’s dissented from Felix’s position; moderating for people like him and Siris who tended to speak their minds always carried that possibility. This time seems to catch him off guard, however, and Felix visibly flinches at his betrayal. “What the _fuck_ , Locus? This is an easy win. There’s nowhere for Walker to go.”

“There’s nowhere for  _us_ to go either. If he puts up a fight, someone will know about it.”

“ _Thank_ you,” says Siris. “Glad one of you still has some common sense.”

“Oh, fuck off,” snaps Felix, before turning back to Locus. “And what’s gotten into you? Him I get, he pulls this shit all the time. But since when are _you_ afraid of a few mafia goons?”

Locus frowns. “I’m not.”

“Don’t let him goad you, Ortez…”

“I’m _not_.” The anger that creeps into his voice quashes the argument instantly, as both Felix and Siris seem to realize they’ve poked the sleeping bear a little too hard. “Now that’s enough. Siris said no; let’s move on.”

Felix scoffs and slumps down petulantly in his seat. “Whatever. You vetoed, Wu, so you find us something better.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” says Siris, and he restarts the car and pulls back onto the street.

They drive toward the edge of the city, all the way back to the outdoor parking lot where Felix had left his car when they’d met up earlier in the afternoon. Siris drops them off with a promise he’ll be in touch soon, and Felix watches him go, uncharacteristically quiet, until the red of his taillights merge into the flow of evening traffic and disappear. Locus wipes a thin layer of snow from the passenger side windows with his coat sleeve while he waits for Felix to unlock the doors.

“Thanks for the support back there, _partner_ ,” Felix grumbles, the epithet spat like a mouthful of poison. “Got a nice view from under that bus.”

Locus wonders how long it would take him to reach the nearest subway station on foot. Too long in this cold, probably, so he chooses a more tactful reply than the one he really wants to give. “We can’t force him to take a job he doesn’t want.”

“Would it have killed you to fucking _try_?”

“He’d already made up his mind. Learn to pick your battles.”

Felix runs a gloved hand through his hair and sighs, and then rounds the front of the car and unlocks the doors. By the time they’ve both settled in, the anger and frustration in his frame has dissipated, and he’s speaking calmly again. “Look, I know it’s a risk. But we can’t keep throwing jobs away every time Siris says ‘no’. This arrangement is killing us.”

Locus narrows his eyes at that insinuation. “You’re rethinking our partnership with Siris?”

“I’m not saying that,” says Felix, splaying his hands on the wheel in a defensive gesture. “But I’m not in this line of work for charity, and I don’t think you are either. We need to make some money, and frankly, Siris is holding us back. _Something_ has to change.”

Locus makes a considering noise, but doesn’t respond.

“If Siris doesn’t want the job, fine -- he doesn’t need to take it. But I gotta pay rent, Sam. You want me to get evicted? Because if that happens I’m moving in with you.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“ _Well_?”

He sighs, knowing that Felix isn’t going to let this go; Siris isn’t the only one who gets stubborn after he makes up his mind about something. So Locus unzips his coat, reaches into the inner pocket, and pulls out the dossier Siris had tossed into the back seat of his car. Felix’s eyes light up and he grabs for the folder, but Locus tips it just out of his reach.

“If we do this,” he warns, “we do it smart.”

“Agreed.”

“No showing off.”

“Fine.”

“ _And_ we leave _nothing_ that leads back to Siris.”

Felix crosses a little ‘x’ over his heart and flashes him a grin. “And hope to die,” he says, and then he snatches the folder out of Locus’ hand.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Acquiring a storage unit had been his first order of business after touching down on Tribute. Most of what little he owns is packed away in similar units on different planets, listed under different aliases, and the one he opens now holds everything he had with him after escaping Chorus, which isn’t much to speak of.

He drops the bag containing his rifle and the other belongings he’d brought from the safe house, and unseals a large crate pushed into the back corner. Inside, the steel and green markings of his armor stare up at him, and he itches to crawl back inside its relative safety. The helmet from which he took his name is as distinctive as his own scarred face, but at least in armor he could cloak himself, track enemies, survive attacks that would otherwise be fatal. But blending into the local population is his only hope of passing for a civilian while in hiding, so for the moment, he’s on his own.

Locus moves the armor aside and keeps digging. Tucked down underneath it is a plain black briefcase containing the counterfeit money he’d stolen from Marcus Wu. He retrieves it and sets it down next to him, and is about to reseal the crate when a flash of orange buried inside catches his eye.

Another helmet rests at the bottom of the crate, scarred and dented, the narrow visor cracked open, and he only lets himself look upon it for a moment. He’d taken it when he’d recovered Felix’s body, the only part of the suit he hadn’t tossed into the sea on Chorus. It isn’t some sentimental souvenir -- he can’t imagine what that might say about him if it were, so he refuses to even think of it that way. He’d taken it because there’s data in its onboard storage, possibly clues to safe havens and secret caches that might help him survive on his own, but all of it is locked down and he hasn’t had the time or resources to decrypt any of it.

Jealously guarding what he considered his, even in death.

He tears his eyes away and reseals the crate, gritting his teeth against a flash of anger he shoves down and away. How dare Felix keep anything for himself when Locus has nothing. Everything he ever had or was is being stripped away from him, layer by layer, his power, his pride, his partner. It ignites a rage within him to think that Felix was the one who’d always insisted their survival hinged on each other, and now he’s gone, and Locus is the one left waiting for the sword to fall -- anxiously aware of a countdown that had started the moment he’d relinquished Felix’s body to the ocean, signalling the beginning of an end that somehow, stubbornly, refuses to arrive.

_(“Do you understand that, Ortez?” he’d said, as the light of the burning ships turned the smoke and clouds orange in the night sky, framing his head in a hellfire halo. “You can’t die yet. One of us dies, we both die. You got that?”)_

How dare he lie about that.

Locus takes the briefcase and slams the controls for the unit door on his way out, locking the tattered remnants of his life inside where no one can ever reach them.

The address on the business card Wu had given him is a corner in midtown. The three-storey building has a grate pulled down over its main door, while the newly-installed windows are plastered with paper signage proclaiming renovations would be complete next month. He takes his time scouting the location, walking all the way down one side of the block and then back up the other, noting bus stops and alleys and the sightlines from nearby buildings. There’s a cafe across the street with large windows, and he spends the rest of the afternoon there watching the street while reviewing his notes on Siris’ empire.

From what he can tell, no one had even heard of Mason Wu until at least a year after they’d gone their separate ways. It had started with the collapse of the Mercado family. Siris had killed the three of them who had come to his home, who had turned out to be the youngest son and two enforcers. Fourteen more had died over the following year, five in highly suspect ‘accidents’ and nine in a startling bloodbath that couldn’t have been executed by a single person. The patriarch was killed by a rival gang the following year, and it’s here that Locus sees telltale signs of Siris reemerging after having basically vanished: mentions of his name in criminal circles, or buying up property with money he certainly hadn’t possessed when they’d worked together.

He’d stopped bounty hunting altogether at some point, which isn’t surprising. What surprises Locus is that Siris had apparently waged such a bloody and openly vengeful campaign against the family who had wronged his, when it had seemed like he’d wanted nothing more than to leave that life behind him for good.

He refreshes the news feed on his phone and a headline catches his eye: _UNSC Threatens Blockade of Border Planet_. When he clicks through to the article his suspicions are confirmed: help has at last reached Chorus, but it’s hardly the liberation they’d hoped for. The former government and its capital may have collapsed, but the planet -- along with its wealth of alien technology and artifacts -- is still technically under military jurisdiction. Now that contact has been reestablished they’ll never give it up, and they have all the power in the galaxy at their disposal to punish its citizens for refusing to fall in line. Chorus, it seems, has simply traded Charon for the UNSC.

Regrettable… but no longer his concern.

 _They’ve survived worse_ , he thinks. _They survived you_.

There’s no mention in the article of the simulation troopers, or the Freelancers, and most importantly, of him and Felix. He wonders if anyone searched for the body he burned, or the armor he dumped into the sea. He wonders if someone will come looking for him, to drag him back to Chorus to face the justice he deserves but evaded. There is much he needs to answer for, and if it has to be to the survivors of his crimes, he finds no fault with that.

But before that time comes, he needs to ensure Malcolm Hargrove answers first.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They take five jobs without Siris.

The first one is Walker. Contrary to Siris’ fears, they apprehend him and turn him over to the police without a hitch, and their resounding success only emboldens them. Siris brings them other work as an apology for blowing off easy money, as promised, and they take those jobs, too. But there’s something about the jobs they do without him that keeps them going back for more, and while Felix claims it’s the money being split two ways instead of three, Locus is left wondering about his own motivations. There’s an intensity and exhilaration in moving in sync with another person, in putting your life entirely in their hands, that somehow leaves him feeling both emptier and more alive than he’s ever been since leaving the military. It’s addictive, destructive behaviour that could be ended by a bullet at any moment, but he doesn’t care.

Felix needs him, and the way they still fit together like they never left the battlefield quiets the ringing in his head, so he supposes that means he needs Felix, too.

Solo jobs two through four pass without incident. The fifth concludes with a stab wound in Locus’ back and Felix swearing as he tears apart the medicine cabinet in the safe house bathroom.

“Why the fuck don’t you have any biofoam?” he demands, as he returns to the common area and tosses the medkit onto the table. Locus can guess what it’s for when Felix rolls up his sleeves and begins washing his hands in the kitchen sink. “I thought emergency preparedness was the whole goddamn _point_ of this place.”

The nonstop chatter is irritating on Locus’ good days, and right now is decidedly not a good day. Right now he would gladly shove Felix face-first through a window if he thought it would grant him a moment’s silence, but doing that would mean he’d have to treat the wound himself, so instead of giving into his impulse, he takes a slow, steadying breath, and replies, “We used it,” through tightly-gritted teeth.

“Well, you have plenty of sutures, so get comfortable,” says Felix, and he pulls up a chair and plants it behind the one Locus is sitting on. “This is gonna suck.”

Locus grumbles his dissatisfaction, but knows he has no choice. He nods once, and Felix gets to work.

It isn’t his first stab wound, or the worst, or even the only one Felix has sewn up for him, but practice doesn’t make the experience any more pleasant. Felix has him sit backwards on his chair so he can move up close behind him, and with the scissors from the medkit he carefully cuts a line clean up the back of Locus’ shirt so he can slide it off his arms instead of over his head. The pain is bad enough already, a dull, steady ache that throbs in time with his pulse, and it spikes to a dizzying, feverish pitch that has him hissing through his teeth when Felix braces his hand against his back and disinfects the gash with a saline solution.

“Oh, come on. It didn’t even hit anything vital,” Felix grouses behind him. “You big fucking baby.”

Locus’ hiss of pain turns to a growl low in his throat. He could not be less in the mood to entertain Felix’s nonsense right now. “That knife was meant for you,” he snaps. “Pay attention next time.”

"Yeah, yeah...” says Felix, and Locus hears the slightest chastened note in his tone. He doesn’t say _thanks_ , or _I owe you one_ \-- Locus hadn’t done him a favour. He’d screwed up, and his apology is cleaning up his mess, patching up the physical damage. It’s as contrite as Felix ever gets; he’ll take it.

By the time his wound is clean and dry his head is swimming so badly he barely feels the needle go in, just a dull burning sensation as Felix pulls it through and threads the skin closed. Locus lowers his head down onto his arm slung across the back of the chair and closes his eyes as he works. It’s not gentle, not by a longshot -- but it’s not careless, either. Every part of Felix is as sharp and vicious as his tongue and Locus prefers him that way, but he can be careful when he needs to be. He sews up the wound with the same precision he uses to kill a target, and Locus imagines the concentration on his face as his bloody fingers knit the edges of his frayed skin back together, each stitch pulled taut with all the smooth, practiced confidence of pulling a trigger.

It’s… something. Not soothing, or comforting, but... something. Maybe he sort of missed this.

Felix finishes tying and clipping off the last suture, then grabs the medkit laying on the table. He finds some lidocaine ointment in the bag and applies it to the wound, his fingers stinging his skin every time they press down, but the rough edges of the pain soon become smoother under the numbing compound, and Locus breathes out a sigh of relief.

“There, that wasn’t so bad,” says Felix as he fixes a bandage over the stitching. Locus grunts his disagreement and waits for him to finish, to move his chair back so they can both stand up, but nothing happens. There’s a long pause without sound or movement, nothing to fill the silence between them but the crackle of the old baseboard heaters and sirens in the distance. And when he’s about to turn around he feels Felix’s hand on him again, softly brushing an old scar on his ribs with the backs of his fingers, and his whole body tenses in response. “Not as fun as this one, though,” he adds, a smirk audible in his voice.

It’s impossible not to think of it -- _Felix’s knee digging into the sewn-up wound on his ribs, eliciting a sharp gasp of pain that Felix swallows with his mouth and tongue, and Locus tightens his bruising grip on his narrow hips in retaliation_ \-- but he quashes the memory down as quickly as it surfaces. He rolls his aching shoulder and shrugs off Felix’s hand with a brusque and quiet, “Enough.”

At his back, Felix withdraws his hand and exhales the rest of his breath in a wounded huff. “Fine, whatever. Just thought it’s been kinda like old times lately.”

“It’s not.”

“O _kay_ , Jesus. Message received.”

Locus watches him skulk over to the sink and scrub the blood from his hands. When the silence he so longed for becomes unbearable, he goes to his bags to retrieve a new shirt, wrestling with a cold, guilty feeling in his gut he doesn’t understand. Rebuffing his advances had been the right thing to do. Taking their frustrations out on each other had been fine when they worked alone, but Siris coming into their lives had complicated that arrangement far too much to continue. Putting an end to it had been Felix’s idea. Nothing had changed, except...

The cold feeling intensifies, spreading all the way up through his chest until the fine hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. First the solo jobs, now this -- twice in recent memory Felix has behaved as though Siris no longer exists. Like they’ve moved on from him entirely and there’s no one else in the universe but them.

It’s a convenient lie he realizes he isn’t willing to perpetuate any longer.

Locus turns toward him. “Felix--”

His phone starts buzzing at that moment, vibrating and skittering across the wooden table and breaking the tension that had swelled between them. He reaches for it, and frowns when he sees Siris’ name on the screen. He doesn’t normally so late. Felix must have noticed the look on his face because he’s standing very still, gripping the edge of the sink and watching Locus closely. “Siris,” he announces, and he answers the call on speaker and leaves his phone face up on the table so they can both hear him. “What is it?”

“ _Sam? Sam--!_ ”

Siris’ voice fills the apartment, rough and raw and shot through with panic. The two of them freeze, eyes wide and locked on each other; Locus recovers first. "Siris, what’s wrong?”

_“Please, please, I need… I need your help. I need you to come get me.”_

“Where?”

 _“Home.”_ His rasping, laboured breathing is audible now, and so is the break in his voice when he continues. _“Some men broke in and -- and Megan’s been shot. Oh my god--”_

“Are they still there?”

_“No, they’re -- they’re dead. No -- no no no, Megan, look at me -- Megan, stay awake, okay? Megan--!”_

Felix is already moving. He grabs the medkit and throws it into the bag they’d brought up from the car earlier, the one containing their sidearms and comm gear. Locus picks up the phone and says, “Siris, listen to me. Barricade yourselves somewhere safe, there could be more of them. _Do not_ let anyone in. I’m with Felix, we’re on our way.”

_“Sam, no, don’t hang up--”_

“They could hear us if I don’t. We’ll be right there. _Go_.”

And he hangs up without letting Siris protest any further.

“Holy shit,” says Felix, eyes wide and face pale. “Was it a hit? At his _house_? Who the fuck knows who we are?”

“Don’t know.” Locus quickly grabs a coat and the bag Felix had put together, and gestures to the door. “You drive, the guns are still in your car.”

“Never a dull fucking moment,” says Felix, and then they go.

 

 

* * *

  


At four p.m. sharp a black sedan with tinted windows pulls up to the curb in front of the shuttered building, where Locus has ducked into the awning’s partial cover to wait. The front passenger-side door opens, and a man steps out onto the sidewalk, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his long overcoat -- ostensibly to keep them warm in the afternoon chill, but Locus knows better than to believe that.

“Mr. Ortez,” says the man, and he opens the rear passenger door. “After you.”

Locus hesitates a moment, glancing down the street for possible tails or reinforcements before turning his gaze back to the stranger. This isn’t what he’d been preparing for. A meeting in unfamiliar territory can be countered with an afternoon of reconnaissance, but getting into a car would negate every advantage he’d identified for himself. “Where are we going?” he asks warily.

“Nowhere, if you don’t hurry up. Rush hour’s a bitch.” The man nods toward the car. “Hands on the roof, please.”

Faced with no other option, Locus grits his teeth and does as he’s told. He sets the briefcase down on the floor of the car and allows the man to frisk him for weapons, losing his handgun in the process. When he’s done, the man directs him to get in the car and shuts the door firmly behind him, and returns to the front passenger seat next to the driver.

As soon as Locus climbs in, he realizes he isn’t alone. There’s a woman already in the back of the car -- middle-aged, dressed sharply in a long coat and tall heels, a datapad resting on her lap. She casts him a thin smile, and a chill seeps into his blood as recognition dawns on him. “Samuel Ortez,” she says. “A pleasure to formally meet you.”

His gaze drops to her neck, where a stylish scarf and the sweep of her greying hair cover up the scarring he knows must be underneath. She says something else to the driver that sounds like it’s being filtered through cotton in Locus’ ears, and then the car pulls away from the curb.

“Not the talkative type, I see,” says Megan Wu. “Mason said you probably hadn’t changed a bit.”

“...I didn’t expect to see you,” he manages at last.

She tilts her head a little at that, the curiosity and pleasantry of the motion undercut by narrowed eyes and a wry twist to her smile. “No? You know what Mason’s up to these days -- did you think that somehow I wouldn’t?”

The thought had not occurred to him. He’d spent a lot of time wondering what happened to Siris, but Megan Wu had never once crossed his mind, and he realizes now as he struggles to form a response that she must know it. “I didn’t think you’d survived,” is what he says to dodge this admission.

Her smile turns icy, and if he didn’t feel trapped by simply being in the car then he certainly does now, pinned to his seat by a gaze both clear and cold-blooded. “You do look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she muses. She taps her shoe against the briefcase he’d set down on the car floor. “You can leave that with me. I’ll see it gets back to where it belongs.”

“It wasn’t my intention to steal from Siris.”

“Yes, Marcus told me what happened. That was quite the stunt you pulled to get here. But if you want to go any further I’m going to need a better explanation than the one you gave him.”

Locus glances at the two men in the front of the car. “And I assume where we’re going depends on my answer?”

“It’s not a test, Samuel,” she quips. “Just security.”

So that’s a yes. Locus bows his head and considers very carefully how much to divulge to her -- too vague or unconvincing and he might not step outside of this car again; too specific and he runs the risk of her or the bodyguards selling him out. He opts for the truth, or at least the heavily-redacted version that omits the key players. “I’ve run into trouble with some dangerous people. They’ve cornered me here and I need to get off-planet. We may have... parted on bad terms, but Siris was always a reasonable man. I’m hoping he can help.”

Megan hums thoughtfully and taps at her datapad for a moment. “Interesting... Well, this makes a bit more sense now, doesn’t it?” She tilts the screen toward him, showing him an aerial photo of a familiar street, and in the centre, the low-rise apartment building containing his safe house. “Home sweet home?”

Locus frowns. “You knew I was here?”

“Not until you came calling, no. But Mason knew that place was yours, and we’ve been checking in on it. His idea, of course -- I couldn’t care less what happens to you.”

She taps the screen again and scrolls through more images of his safe house and the surrounding neighbourhood, until she stops on a scan of a document bearing Casbah’s municipal letterhead. His frown deepens, and he peers at her suspiciously. “This isn’t ‘checking in’. It’s surveillance.”

“Yes, and you should be thanking us.” Megan nods toward the datapad. “A few months ago we noticed that building owed the city back taxes last year. If we hadn’t leveraged our influence it might not have been there when you came to town.”

“And is that what you do for Siris? Leverage his influence?”

“ _Our_ influence,” she corrects him, with an edge so fine as to nearly vanish into politeness. “Yes. I handle our family’s legal affairs.” She swipes at the datapad again, and the document is replaced with a different letter bearing the same format. “The tax incident seemed odd on its own, but after we blocked it, this happened: documentation from the city declaring the building condemned. It’s cleared for demolition next month. Seems like your ‘dangerous people’ have friends on city council.”

Locus takes the datapad and reads over the document, teeth and stomach and hands all clenching in barely suppressed anger. Hargrove could strike him at any time if he knew about this place. He hadn’t found any bugs or cameras the last time he’d swept for them, but he’d let that lull him into a false sense of security. If Hargrove doesn’t know he went back there yet it will only be a matter of time.

“Are you being watched?” Megan asks.

He shakes his head and hands the device back to her. “No, not yet. If they knew where to find me I’d be dead. They’re probably just preparing to burn anywhere I might go to ground.”

Megan shrugs a shoulder and nods appreciatively. “That’s what I would do.”

Locus lets that admission hang in the air for a moment, but she doesn’t walk it back. And to think Siris had been concerned about protecting her. How absurd. “That’s smart. Is that how a lawyer and a bounty hunter managed to build an empire from nothing?”

“That and a little hard work,” says Megan, fixing him with a tight, unfriendly smile. “And good connections. Are you thinking you missed out?”

“No. Just curious.”

“Well, keep that curiosity to yourself. You lost the right to inquire about our business a long time ago.”

There it is: the landmine under his feet, the barbed wire strung up around territory too personal to invade. Felix would have been able to slip through without anyone knowing he’d seen it, only triggering the trap when it would be useful to him; Locus prefers to defuse the threat upfront and permanently. “I don’t care if you dislike me,” he says, and the sharp arch of her brow tells him he’s chosen much too mild a word to describe her feelings toward him. “But if your goal was to interrogate me your bodyguards could have done it just as easily. Why go out of your way to bring me here?”

“So I could look you in the eye,” she replies, and she’s certainly doing that now, holding Locus’ gaze with an intensity that leaves him feeling exposed. “So that when I asked why you and your partner destroyed my life you’d have to look at me when you answered.”

“We _saved_ your life.”

“After the damage had already been done. Considering it was your carelessness that endangered us, that was the very least you could do.”

“Siris had nothing to do with that job. Your involvement was a coincidence.”

"And you think that’s better? If it hadn’t been me, it would have been some other prosecutor -- you know that, don’t you? You understand that when you hunted criminals for sport, it affected more than your bank account, right?” She folds her arms and leans back against the seat, her confrontational manner hardening into a comfortable, unshakeable resolve. “You knew the risk of going after Walker and you did it anyway. Mason warned you there would be consequences, and you spit in his face by siding with Gates.”

“He was my _partner_.”

“And Mason wasn’t?”

He bites back a frustrated curse. There’s no way to make her understand. Siris had been a trusted ally, but not a _partner_. Not like Felix. Siris had been a functioning whole, but he and Felix were two broken parts from the same machine that could only work together, that kept each other running long after they both should have died.

Even knowing Felix had invested a lot of time and effort into making him believe he was beyond salvage, he isn’t sure he’d been wrong about that part.

“Our relationship was… complicated,” is what he ends up saying instead. “It blinded me to a lot of things. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care. Frankly, seeing you come crawling back to Mason is more satisfying than any apology you could offer.” She leans toward him then, every trace of polite facade melting out of her expression and posture, and Locus has to force himself not to recoil. He used to watch Felix effect the same transformation, when he was done playing nice. “I brought you here to make you understand one thing,” she says quietly. “I’m Mason’s partner now. You had a choice, Samuel, between your partner and mine, and you chose poorly. I imagine both our lives would have turned out very differently if you hadn’t.”

She withdraws from his space after making her point and goes back to working on her datapad, apparently content to ignore him for the rest of the trip. Locus turns his attention out the window and says nothing, trying to calm the gnawing, roiling ache in his gut ignited by her accusation, and as the car carries them further and further from the city limits, he begins to wonder if coming to Siris with his throat bared is a good idea after all.

Felix had never cared one way or the other if Megan had died. He’d never been burdened with an overactive conscience; it was all the same to him. Locus would have preferred she lived, from the purely practical standpoint that her death would have made Siris useless to them as a partner. But he’d taken the risk and chosen Felix anyway.

He’d always chosen Felix, until the day on Chorus when he didn’t.

 

* * *

 

“Turn off-- Felix, what the _fuck_ , you missed--”

“I know where I’m going, shut the _fuck up_ , I swear to--”

“--hospital right down there, you missed the fucking exit!”

Locus glances in the rear-view mirror as another car flashes past them on the rain-slick highway, its headlights illuminating the back seat just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of Siris, cradling his wife’s head in his lap and applying pressure to the blood-soaked towel wrapped around her throat. The image of his tear- and blood-streaked face is burned into Locus’ retinas long after the car is plunged back into darkness.

“We’re not going to a hospital,” says Felix.

Siris sputters out a noise of disbelief. “Yes we _are_ , and I swear to god you’d better be fucking driving there _right now_.”

“You killed three men, Wu,” Felix reminds him, his voice steady but rising in volume to compete with Siris. “What do you think’s gonna happen when we get there? They’re gonna call the cops, they’re gonna go to your house -- they’re gonna ask _questions_.”

“You think I give a shit about that?! Get her to a hospital, asshole! _Now_!”

“I said _no_!” Felix snaps, twisting half-around in the driver’s seat to snarl it back at him. “Now shut the fuck up or I’m dumping you _both_ on the side of the fucking road!”

“You son of a _bitch_ \--”

Siris lunges forward and shoves the muzzle of his gun against the back of Felix’s head, and the car swerves sharply left and then right again as Felix startles. “Jesus _fuck_ , will you-- Sam _,_ do something about him! _Christ_!”

Locus turns and seizes Siris’ wrist and bends it backward; Siris is distraught enough that he can’t maintain his grip on both the gun and Megan’s throat, and Locus is able to wrest it away from him easily. “Get a hold of yourselves!” he bellows, his deep voice booming inside the cramped car. “Felix is right. We can’t go to a hospital. We’ll get help somewhere else.”

Siris lets out a choked sob, the fight bleeding out of him as he realizes he’s at their mercy. “Jesus Christ, Sam, _please_ \--”

Locus ignores him and turns back around in his seat, satisfied the threat has been neutralized. “Sheffield,” he says to Felix.

“Yeah, I know, where the fuck did you _think_ I was going?” Felix leans across him and throws open the glove compartment, tearing out papers, a gun, and his phone before letting out a startled swear and swerving out of the way of an oncoming car. “Shit-- fucking _call him_ before I kill all of us, would you?!”

Locus does as ordered. He sits with the phone pressed to his ear, letting the ringing drown out the noise of the rain pounding against the windshield and Felix’s frustrated swearing and Siris’ quiet, thick-voiced prayers.

  
  
  


The private clinic is on the outskirts of the city, owned and operated by an ex-UNSC medic they sometimes call when jobs go south. It’s a shady practice no matter how they look at it, but they’re often strapped for cash and Sheffield offers emergency treatment for cheap; discretion costs extra. If they have the supplies to trade -- guns, money, info -- he’ll extract bullets quietly, and if he’s feeling generous, might even tip them off about the movements of targets or rival bounty hunters who hadn’t been able to afford the same level of privacy. Locus hopes the bag of guns sitting at his feet is worth the cost of his silence in this case.

The clinic lights are turned off everywhere except the room in the back where they took Megan. Locus sits in the darkened waiting area alone and stares down the hall at the sliver of light spilling through the crack under the examination room’s closed door. Felix has gone to clean the blood out of his car as best he can before the sun comes up; the last thing they need is to hit a roadblock or routine traffic stop with the back seat looking like a crime scene. And Siris...

Siris emerges from the exam room at nearly four a.m. He still looks like a wreck, his eyes dark and swollen, face pale and drawn except where dried blood still flecks his skin. Locus stands to meet him.

“Any news?” he asks, but Siris just slowly shakes his head. He’s looking down and away, eyes red-rimmed and bottom lip chewed raw, and Locus hesitates. As an enlisted man he would see his comrades comfort each other during loss and hardship, offering the reassuring weight of a hand on a shoulder, or the knock of one helmet against another to ground each other in reality. But what good were such gestures, really; the suffering still lingered long after the temporary contact had faded. Locus clenches his hands into fists and instead directs his energy where it has always been much more useful. “Who were they?”

“Don’t know,” says Siris. “They weren’t there for me.”

“...Megan?”

“Yeah. She’s been getting threats to drop a case she was assigned. It happens, but they can’t give in to shit like that.”

“What case?” Locus asks. Siris shrugs helplessly, but the way he tightens his mouth and refuses to meet Locus’ eyes draws his suspicion. “They attacked you in your home. We’re not going to let this go unanswered.”

“They’ll fucking kill you,” says Siris at a whisper. “And Megan, and me, and Gates, and anyone else who retaliates. I can’t let you get involved.”

“This isn’t just about you, Siris -- this is a liability. We can’t work with you if someone’s watching your movement, and if they know where you live then they _are_ watching. I can’t turn my back to a threat like that.”

Siris exhales a shaky breath and runs a hand over his face. After a long moment, the struggle in his expression passes, and he nods. “You remember that job we dropped? With Walker? Someone ended up bringing him in anyway. Megan was assigned to prosecute the case. One of the guys who came to the house had this... huge scar on the side of his face, and Sheffield said it sounded like one of the Mercado enforcers, so… I think we can put two and two together. Those men were sent to kill her -- make her a warning to the whole DA’s office to drop the case.”

His silence is conspicuous but he can’t formulate a response fast enough to hide it. Locus opens his mouth but nothing comes out, and when their eyes meet in the dark, understanding slowly dawns on Siris’ tired face.

“Sam… tell me it wasn’t you,” he breathes, and when Locus can’t do it, the fear on his face twists into horror. “Are you fucking with me? Is that why Gates didn’t want to go to the hospital? Are you fucking _serious_?”

“We didn’t know--”

“You son of a _bitch!_ ” Siris gets into his space before he can react and seizes his coat collar, slamming him against the wall so hard he sees stars as the wound in his back explodes in pain. “She could have _died!_ ”

“She _didn’t--_ ”

“She almost did, and you were going to _let her_.” Siris jabs a bloody, accusatory finger toward the clinic windows, pointing to wherever Felix is cleaning up their mess right now. “ _He_ was going to let her and you _listened to him_.”

“Felix is my partner,” growls Locus. “He is a _professional_. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Last I checked there were _three_ partners in this outfit, Sam. Three. You don’t get to sideline me for him whenever you fucking _feel_ like it.”

“Enough,” Locus warns, and he pushes Siris off him so firmly and easily that it makes his point for him: a physical confrontation won’t end the way Siris wants it to. “Felix and I did what we had to do. We left no trace at the scene. It’s _your_ attachments that are putting us all in danger right now--”

“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit--”

“--so calm down, and let us help you figure a way out of this.”

“There _is_ no way out. What did I tell you before we dropped the job? I told you this is the mafia we’re dealing with, that they’re going to keep coming at us until they get what they want. You _agreed_ with me. Was that a fucking lie?”

“No. Felix… convinced me otherwise.”

Siris scoffs. “Of course he did...” He takes another step back, and then another, and the distance between them slowly grows wider and safer and colder. “You know…” he begins thoughtfully, “I started working with you because you’re the best there is. You’ve got a good head, and you get the job done; there was no one I’d rather have watching my back. But Felix is in this for one person, and I don’t trust that rat-faced piece of shit for _one_ _second_. I’m done.”

“Siris--”

“It’s him or me, Sam. He goes or I go. Make up your mind.”

The silence curls around them like smoke after a battle, and Locus looks at the floor, his fists held tight at his sides as though they could catch the most stable arrangement he’s known in years before it slips through his fingers for good. They both already know his answer. Siris has seen it, that poisonous dependency that binds them together, for better or worse, the shadows that cloud their minds and chase them back to safe houses to mend each other’s wounds instead of allowing them to put down their guns and seek a new life.

But what Siris has never been able to understand is that there is no new life for them. Felix has never been wrong about that.

Locus never does give an answer; his silence speaks volumes, and it’s enough. Siris nods his understanding, and his voice drips with disgust when he replies, “You two fucking deserve each other.”

“Siris…”

“Get the fuck out of here, Sam. We’ll find our own way home.”

He picks up the bag of guns and then stalks out of the waiting room and down the dark hallway, back straight and fists curled. Locus stands rooted to the spot, watching him until he disappears into the room where they took Megan, and only then does he go, returning to the bloody car and the only person he has left.

  
  
  


They drive back across town in silence. Neither of them says a word until Felix pulls to a stop at a red light, when Locus turns to him, his eyes tired and heavy, and says, “This is what you wanted, isn’t it.”

He scoffs. “What, for us to be a man down? Yeah, it’s a real--”

“Isaac.”

Felix looks at him. The stop light bathes the sharp angles of his face in blood.

Locus exhales sharply through his nose and turns away, struggling to rein in his anger. The reopened wound on his back burns and itches under the bandage, and suddenly he can’t think of anything else. “You should have discussed it with me,” he says darkly.

“What the fuck, Locus, it wasn’t like I _meant_ for this to happen,” Felix protests, and when that’s met only with silence, he sighs and tries another approach. “Look… this sucks, but it was a long time coming. Mason’s not like us. You and me, we’ve already seen the worst there is. There’s no coming back from that, there’s no… white fucking picket fences out there for us. When it came down to it, Mason was never gonna choose us over all that. You know it, I know it -- he sure as fuck knew it.”

Still, Locus says nothing.

“Sam… Come on, listen to me,” says Felix, his voice serious and sure, and he waits for Locus to meet his eyes before continuing. “We don’t need him. We’ve been doing this for years, and we have _never_ needed anyone but each other. We’ll survive -- that’s what we do. That’s _who we are_. Okay?”

There are a lot of things he could have done differently in that moment: said no, or opened the door and walked away, or turned in his seat and choked the life out of him until his eyes glassed over and his pulse went still under his hands. But Felix’s words trigger an ingrained response in his brain, an instinctual need to cling to what Felix offers him -- not love or friendship or camaraderie, but _survival_ , above all else -- and he does nothing. The light turns green, and he doesn’t need to say anything at all; Felix is driving anyway.

 


	3. Mason

Sam jolts awake to stillness and silence, to a throbbing in his leg and an agony in his torso that wracks him with nausea with every heaving breath. He groans, and the movement splits his dry, cracked lips, the sting reverberating through his parched tongue and throat. He blinks until the world comes into semi-focus, until the warnings flashing across his HUD become almost readable instead of a painful, too-bright blur of colour and light. He squints his eyes shut, trying to blink away the dried blood he can feel on his face, inside his helmet--

His helmet.

His armor. His unit, their _ship--_

It comes back to him in a rush: the missile impact, the hull of the dropship being torn open in the skies above the battlefield. Klaxons blaring as they spiralled out of control and toward the ground and then--

There’s a scuffle of movement and he tilts his head toward the sound, squints at the dimmed armor lights that shift toward him in the darkness. A soldier in his squad’s tan and green uniform appears in his blurred vision and steadies him with a hand on his shoulder. Gates. He’s too disoriented to feel annoyed just yet. “What happened?” he croaks. “Where are we?”

“Dunno,” says Gates, and his voice sounds as rough as Sam feels. He has his helmet off; something dark is smeared down the side of his pale face. “Some kind of old ruin. As far away from the crash site as I could drag you.”

Sam tilts his head to one side and stares into the darkness until he can start to make out their surroundings. The ground is solid -- stone, he realizes after a moment. When he focuses he can see the edges of an open doorway, smooth columns that form an arched entrance to their hideout, and beyond it, the night sky. When he shifts to get a better look, a spike of agony shoots through him; he grunts, and lifts his hand toward the site of the throbbing pain in his abdomen, feeling around with gloved fingertips. There’s a tear in his undersuit, right below the chestplate, and a wound he doesn’t remember sustaining stopped up with biofoam. The warnings on his HUD he’s ignored until now deliver the bad news: one deep laceration in his abdomen, another in his right leg with shrapnel still buried in it. Still wearing armor, though; the biofoam and the analgesics administered by the suit’s medical suite are likely the only reason he isn’t dead or delirious with pain.

He doesn’t ask what happened to the rest of their unit. They wouldn’t be alone now if they weren’t the only survivors.

“Covvies haven’t come back to check the crash site yet, but they will soon,” says Gates. “Think you can walk?”

Before he can answer the quiet is ruptured by the thunder of AA batteries and explosions in the distance, and Gates’ head swivels toward the sound on instinct. Through the doorway of the ruins Sam sees the night sky, ablaze with the light of burning ships. They watch the wreckage raining to the planet’s surface like brimstone in silence.

“You need to go,” breathes Sam when he can manage to speak again. He wets his lips as much as he can with a sandpaper tongue, and tries not to gag on the taste of his own blood. “I’ll just slow you down.”

Gates scoffs. “Yeah, no shit. But if we’re gonna make it to the nearest outpost I need you and your sniper rifle to watch my ass. So don’t go getting any ideas about kicking the bucket before me.”

“This isn’t _funny_.”

“I’m not _joking_ , asshole.” Gates’ face is thin and pointed and had always lent him a weak, almost emaciated look -- but there’s a ferocious gleam in his eyes now that belies a hidden strength, a raw determination to fight and kill and _survive_ , and the argument dies on Sam’s tongue when he sees it. “No one’s coming for us. We’re _alone_. Do you understand that, Ortez? You can’t die yet. One of us dies, we both die. You got that?”

The effort of chewing him out takes the wind out of Gates’ sails and he wilts a little with a muttered curse, bowed over his midsection with his arms crossed over it protectively. Sam says nothing; and for years after that moment he remembers the way Isaac looked at him beneath the light of death and destruction, like they were the last two people left alive in the entire galaxy.

And he decides he’s going to fight, and kill, and survive alongside him.

  


* * *

  
  


The estate is a twenty minute drive outside the city, built on a sprawling plot of land enclosed by thick, bare-limbed trees on the exterior grounds and an imposing ten-foot tall stone fence surrounding the house proper. The car pulls up to the wrought-iron gate and the driver keys a code into an external console, and it swings open to admit them passage into the grounds. Locus keeps an eye out through his tinted window as they drive past a row of hedges and up to the main house, and at a glance he spots a handful of cameras mounted near the outer wall, and hardware for what are probably infrared sensors at the edge of the greenery, all of it placed so conspicuously as to be almost insulting. Siris knows his way around surveillance tech better than anyone Locus has ever known; such an avoidable setup isn’t so much a deterrent as it is a trap designed to lower an intruder’s guard.

Much like being driven here by his wife and bodyguards, he supposes -- but in truth he still doesn’t know what to make of that. Siris could have easily denied his request for a meeting, which would have pushed Locus to break into the estate in order to force one. He can’t decide which scenario would put him more at a disadvantage, even if Siris clearly had come to his own conclusion.

The car finally pulls to a stop in the circular driveway in front of the main house, a grand two-storey stone manor with tall windows in neat rows on each floor. (Reinforced, probably -- he can’t depend on being able to break them from inside if he has to.) After they’ve stopped, the bodyguard in the passenger seat gets out and opens the door for Locus, while Megan exits on her own side and circles around the back of the car to meet them, the briefcase full of counterfeit money dangling from her fingertips.

“Mason’s in the garden,” she says. “He wants to speak with you privately. Emmett, please see him in.”

The bodyguard nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

Megan extends her hand toward Locus, suddenly all business and courtesy despite her earlier animosity toward him, and he takes it warily. “Thank you for your cooperation, Samuel,” she says, and then she smiles faintly. “Mason always said you were the reasonable one.”

He nods, unsure how else to respond, and watches as she turns and walks toward the house alone without sparing him a second thought.

“We’ll go around back,” says Emmett. “Walk in front of me. This way.”

They take a cobblestone path around the west side of the house and come to a tall iron fence at the back, beyond which Locus can see rows of trees and shrubs but not much else in what remains of the weak evening light. Emmett opens the gate and motions for Locus to enter ahead of him. “Follow the path in,” he says, indicating a few stone steps leading down toward a worn trail that bends and disappears around the west wing of the manor. “If the boss gives the okay, I’ll see you back out when you’re done. You can have your gun back then.”

Locus draws a deep breath and exhales it slowly to steady himself as he steps forward, the way he would with a rifle in his hands and a target in its sights. “And if he doesn’t?”

Emmett shuts the gate behind him as he passes through it, closing him inside. “Then I guess I’ll see you either way.”

He glances back; the shadows cast by the gate and the house conceal the man’s figure, distorting it into something ominous in his eyes for a brief moment, a beast waiting to devour him should he fail. He shakes off the dread that settles over him, and turns back toward Siris’ garden, and descends.

The garden is too open for him to be comfortable. The entire area seems to be the size of a small park, but with the season being on the cusp of spring the young deciduous trees are still sparse, and the rest of the alien plantlife barely rises to his waist, providing no cover to hide from potential danger. Its layout mirrors that of the house so that there are clear sightlines from windows in every wing, the kind of setup Locus would absolutely exploit if it were him perched in one of those windows, waiting to take his shot. Daylight is nearly extinguished but his way is lit by small domed lanterns, set low into the ground on either side of the path like blazing pools of fire, stretching out into the darkness ahead and drawing him further into unfamiliar territory.

The path eventually curves toward the middle of the garden and leads him to a courtyard. It’s unmistakably the garden’s centerpiece; the lighting is better here, and the air a little warmer, an artificial oasis created by lanterns and heat lamps set up near the pillars that mark its edges, where empty flower beds await warmer weather. Toward the back is a thick-trunked tree with brilliant turquoise bark, and at its base, a small ebony statue of a sharp-eared canine in repose that stands watch over two benches arranged facing each other.

And sitting on one of them, watching his approach with keen interest and prudent caution, is Siris.

He hadn’t expected him to have changed so much. His hair has turned grey at the roots, and the thin lines and faint scars on his face disappear behind a neatly-trimmed beard that grants him a gravitas he hadn’t yet earned as a younger man -- developments that speak to the bloody war he’d fought to build the empire he now commands. But the difference is not merely physical; Siris wears his power like a mantle, visible in his upright posture and the firm, confident eye contact he holds with Locus as he approaches. They regard each other in silence for a moment, taking the time to read the arc of their histories in the unfamiliar geography of their faces, and then Siris stands to greet him.

“Ortez,” he says, offering a handshake that Locus accepts. “Good to see you’re well.”

“You too, Siris.”

He cracks the barest of wry smiles. “Haven’t heard _that_ name in a long time. Still using code names, I see.”

“Sorry. Old habit.”

“Not a bad one for people in our line of work. Please, sit down.” Siris waves him toward the second bench, but Locus hesitates. He glances toward the house -- there’s a clear view of the manor from here, doors and windows dark and possibly concealing all kinds of threats. Siris smirks when he catches him looking. “Sam, please. I wouldn’t make you come all this way just to have someone else kill you. Sit.”

Locus regards him blankly, unsure whether he should take the comment as a threat or a joke, but Siris doesn’t clarify. So when Siris turns to sit down, he follows his lead cautiously.

“Apologies for making you come to me,” says Siris. “Meeting in the city probably would have been more convenient, but I had to be sure you were alone.”

“I am.”

"Imagine my surprise. Where’s ‘Felix’ these days?”

“...Dead,” says Locus, and it occurs to him as the word leaves his mouth that it’s first time he’s confirmed it out loud. After months of that knowledge bearing down on him in silence, the weight of it suddenly lifting leaves him a little disoriented. It takes him a moment to collect himself before he thinks to add, “On a job, about three months ago.”

“Really,” says Siris, head canted at a wary angle. “I hadn’t heard.”

“We were in the outer colonies at the time. News doesn’t usually travel inward from there.”

Siris leans back slightly as he takes stock of Locus again, reassessing him in light of this new information. Locus realizes a little belatedly that the toll the last few months has taken on him must be visible: sleep-deprived and nervous, exhausted by the stress of being pursued by unseen enemies, uncomfortably exposed in an old, overstuffed winter jacket instead of his armor. He’s no less ruthless and dangerous than the last time they’d met, but he’s hardly the threatening figure he would present fully armored or with a gun in his hand, and he can see Siris calculating and considering all these facts when he looks at him now. At last, just when Locus is beginning to expect an accusation of dishonesty, Siris lets out a breath and says, “As hard to believe as that is… I suppose you wouldn’t risk showing your face after all these years if it weren’t true.” He bows his head in a solemn gesture of respect. “My condolences, Sam.”

The words punch through his chest like a shotgun blast, and Locus freezes. He opens his mouth and reaches for a response, but can’t find one amid the chaotic thoughts suddenly racing through his head -- _the sword he keeps close at all times; the helmet buried protectively beneath his own belongings; the safe house he ran back to at the first sign of danger_ \-- each one more alarming than the last as he realizes what it means that he’s clung so tightly to these relics, to this debris from a wreckage only he survived. When he finally finds the words to speak, his voice comes out sounding hollow as he says, “That’s… unnecessary. I’m not grieving.”

“No?”

“To be honest, I’m... not sure if I should consider it a loss.”

Siris gives a little half-shrug at that. “We grieve all kinds of things, not just loss. The people we used to be and now aren’t, the way things could have gone and didn’t. All change comes with its own kind of grief attached.”

Locus lowers his eyes, unsure of how to respond to such a personal assertion. He’s been dealing in death for his entire life; by design, mourning has never, _could_ never be a part of that. Guilt, regret, grief -- to survive the war and everything that came after, it wasn’t enough to bury those feelings; they needed to be killed. He’d done everything he could to achieve that goal, honed himself into the perfect weapon, _a suit of armor and a gun_ for other people to use for their own purposes. A true soldier, he’d thought -- but nothing more than a facade, exactly as Agent Washington had insisted. Now that it’s been stripped away he can see the reality laid bare beneath it, an ugly, gnarled mass of conflicting emotions with roots too deep to dislodge, lying dormant as Siris’ garden -- and pulsing at the center of it, the raw, open wound that had been festering between him and Felix for a long, long time.

He doesn’t know how to feel about him anymore. No one else has been so closely entwined with his life, so essential to what makes Locus himself, and yet such a source of anguish and seething rage. He wants to hate him, with every ounce of fury and violence left in his body, but he _can’t_ , and that knowledge only fuels his anger. Felix had given him everything he’d wanted -- bled for him, killed for him, fought by his side when he needed a partner, wielded him as a weapon when that’s all he could stand to be -- and in return Locus had offered his loyalty and his willing cooperation at every juncture. If they had become monsters then they had walked that road together, side by side, eyes fixed on the horizon so that they never really _looked_ at each other to see what they were becoming, until Locus refused to take that final, fatal step and Felix didn’t.

He did this to himself; he doesn’t deserve to be grieving now. He doesn’t want _pity_ , of all things.

“There are plenty of people who would celebrate his death,” admits Locus, trying to suppress any visible sign of his discomfort and steer their conversation away from what he would rather not think about. “I’m surprised you aren’t one.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, this is the best news I’ve heard all week. But I’m not a _complete_ asshole, Sam. I know you were close.” Siris pauses there, gaze level with Locus’ own as if daring him to deny what he has likely always suspected, but when Locus simply stares back and doesn’t take the bait, he continues on. “Besides, it’s been a long time since either of you has been in a position to hurt me, so why fixate on the past? I’ve moved on with my life. You have too, unless I’m mistaken. Not bounty hunting anymore?”

As if he would have made it through the front gate if he were. The false curiosity turns Locus’ stomach. Despite his claim of ‘moving on’, Siris has been at the very least watching his safe house, a fact he knows only because Megan chose to divulge it -- likely as a warning that his reappearance in their lives is not so unexpected that they aren’t prepared to deal with him. He can only guess what else they already know, so to be safe he chooses to answer honestly. “No. Gave it up for mercenary work not long after you left.”

“Good. You were wasted on that life.”

“You too, it seems. When did you quit?”

“When my wife told me to,” says Siris, with a half smile Locus doesn’t return. “Really, after everything that happened I didn’t have much of a choice. When I came clean with her about my work with you and Gates, I thought she was going to either divorce or murder me -- and honestly I didn’t know which one to hope for. But… she gave me another chance.” His smile turns wistful at some memory Locus isn’t privy to as he absently twists his wedding ring, and then it fades altogether, leaving his expression neutral once again. “She didn’t need to forgive me, but she did. She brought me from the brink of ruin back into this world and I’ll be repaying her for the rest of my life.”

There’s a genuine fondness and reverence in his voice that makes Locus uncomfortable, a sentiment so alien he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. So instead of prying further he simply says, “You’ve done well for yourself.”

“For my family,” Siris corrects him, and he waves dismissively at the beauty and opulence of the surrounding estate grounds. “All of this is nothing without them. They’re the most important thing in my life. So I can’t say I’m thrilled about you getting as close to them as you did.”

“I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t desperate.”

“No, probably not. You’re bold, not stupid. So... why don’t you tell me what brings you to Tribute?”

Locus nods, relieved to have at last arrived at their business, and draws a deep breath. News of Felix’s death would only buy him so much goodwill; he has exactly one chance to convince Siris he’s worth protecting. “I’m being pursued by someone I crossed,” he explains. “Malcolm Hargrove. CEO of Charon Industries. He’s been smuggling dangerous tech out of the outer colonies for years, reverse-engineering and selling it to the highest bidders. Some of it stolen from the UNSC. They have Hargrove now, but I know how he operates. They won’t find everything. I want to track down his men and his storehouses and destroy all of it.”

“Sounds like charitable work,” says Siris, and then he shrugs. “What does it have to do with me?”

“Hargrove’s men stranded me here. I need money, and a ship to get offworld. Information would be helpful as well, if you have it.”

“You first. Did you work for Hargrove?”

Locus tenses; he can’t lie about this. All he has to offer is his credibility, and withholding information after claiming to come in peace will destroy that in an instant if Siris finds out. “...Yes,” he admits hesitantly.

“And the job you were doing in the outer colonies -- the one that got Gates killed. Is this the same one?” There’s a quiet, dangerous edge to the question that makes Locus’ stomach drop, and Siris sneers at him when he fails to answer. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Ortez? That I can’t put two and two together? I’m not going to bankroll your personal vendetta.”

“That’s... not what this is about.”

“No? Then what if instead of money and a ship, I offered you a new identity and safe harbour in exchange for leaving Charon alone. An opportunity to move on. Would you take that instead?”

“You don’t understand. That wouldn’t fix--”

“Oh, I understand perfectly well,” says Siris, and though he doesn’t raise his voice, his calm demeanor turns forceful, his tone becoming deeper and his expression colder to project the power he now possesses. “You wronged me, Ortez. You put Gates above me, above us and everything we worked for, and now that he’s dead you’re _still_ letting him dictate your life. So tell me why I should help, instead of letting you rot in the grave you watched him dig for you.”

Locus can’t hold his gaze any longer; he looks away and pretends to be interested in the canid statue that stands watch over them, in the way its long onyx ears stand alert as though carefully evaluating their conversation. The answer, of course, is that he shouldn’t; that Locus is unworthy of help, and what he’s asking for can be granted only out of compassion he didn’t earn and doesn’t deserve. But still… Siris is asking the question instead of simply having him shot dead, so he must think Locus is useful to him in some way. Trying to make sense of their shared history, he supposes, to fill out the impressions where Felix dug in his fingers so hard he left marks that never faded.

Siris _needs_ him to answer, for the same reason Locus risked coming back.

“You don’t owe me anything,” says Locus. “But I came to you because you know what it’s like to start over after Felix. To have your life torn down and to have to rebuild it with your own hands. I thought you would understand better than anyone.”

Siris doesn’t speak for a long time, though Locus suspects he wants to. He leans back against the bench, the threat melting off him slowly as he processes that admission, his expression a volatile mix of anger and pain and resentment. Locus isn’t good with people and their subtleties, but this -- this he understands. No matter what had become of them in the end, the three of them share a past that can’t be undone, a partnership that had flourished brilliantly before it rotted and withered away at the end. Untangling the highs from the years of animosity that followed is a complicated, difficult process, and one with which he is becoming painfully familiar.

Whatever conclusion he reaches, Siris doesn’t voice it. The anger slowly ebbs away and then he’s calm again, the old friend instead of the dangerous criminal. The two personas are equally unfamiliar to Locus, the bounty hunter and the king of the underworld, and enough time has passed between them that he can’t be sure anymore which one is genuine and which one the mask. With Felix, both would have been real; with Siris, maybe neither is. Maybe the real Mason Wu is simply someone Locus is no longer permitted to see.

“You know, I once thought that way, too,” says Siris quietly, after a long period of silence has passed. “That the two of you had destroyed my life; that I had to ‘start over’. That I didn’t know anyone who had to rebuild from the ground up like I did. But that wasn’t quite true -- Megan was going through the same thing. We relied on each other, trusted absolutely no one else. We got through it by deciding we were going to survive together, or not at all.”

Something in Locus’ chest seizes at those words, and he grinds his teeth to drive out the ghost of Felix’s voice in his ear, his lips on his skin, a flame he can’t extinguish flickering on the edge of his memory. The surge of tension and unnameable emotion quickly hardens to anger at the casual cruelty of Siris describing something impossible for him to have, but he smothers it; if Siris is inclined to talk about what Locus has wondered for so long, he doesn’t want to dissuade him. So he swallows down the tightness in his chest, and decides to take advantage of his sudden openness. “What did you do?” he asks quietly. “What happened to you?”

There’s a long pause before Siris continues -- a moment where he considers Locus carefully, as if deciding whether he deserves an answer. But eventually his reply comes, cautious and subdued. “Things were… tense after Megan healed. I quit bounty hunting and she went back to work, but we barely saw each other anymore -- she left early every day, stayed late every night. But then one evening she finally came to talk to me. Sat me down at the kitchen table, laid out all these materials -- documents, photos, mugshots of the men who’d attacked us. Everything we could possibly want to know about the Mercado family and their movements, all smuggled out from the DA’s office. And she looked me in the eye, and she said, ‘We’re going to kill them’.”

Locus can picture her saying just that; perhaps not as calmly as she would now, but full of conviction and rage, fuelled by the kind of anger that sparks from a grave injustice and cools to an impenetrable shield over time. Righteous indignation isn’t an emotion he normally feels -- but it is one he recognizes, having borne witness to it and enjoyed its protections for so long.

“I was against it at first,” Siris goes on. “I left you and Gates to get _away_ from that life, to keep her and Marcus safe. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was no other option -- that the only way you can truly keep _anything_ safe is with power, and we had no intentions of ever being powerless again. So... I called in favors with people from our bounty hunting days. We went to war, backed up with her data... and we won. And after the Mercados fell, it was the next gang, and the next, and each time we tore someone down we incorporated their remnants into our network.” Siris holds his hands out, palms up, indicating the centre of wealth they now occupied. “And here we are. None of this would exist if I’d fixated on my past with you instead of my future with her.”

“You’re saying if I want to start over, I need a partner.”

“No. I’m saying your mistake is thinking of it as _starting over_ at all. If I treat you and Gates like... some kind of cataclysm I had to recover from, then my whole life, everything I’ve worked for, becomes about _you_. It gives the two of you much more power and credit than you deserve -- and Megan much less.” His expression turns pitying for the briefest of moments. “Don’t give him that kind of power over you, Sam. Gates only thought he was the center of the universe; you don’t need to keep believing it now that he’s dead.”

Locus scowls, irritation nearly boiling over, though he doesn’t quite know if it’s shame from being admonished or just an ingrained defensiveness of Felix. He’s under no delusions about what kind of person he’d been, but as far as he’s concerned Siris lost the right to talk about him like that when he decided to leave. “Thanks for the advice,” he grumbles bitterly. “But you were lucky to still have your partner. I have nothing.”

“Not true. You have the same things I had: an enemy, and a chance to strike back at him. That can keep people like you and me going for a long, long time.”

“...You’re willing to help, then?”

Siris stands up, smooths down his overcoat and buttons it closed, and nods toward the house in an invitation for Locus to follow him. He does, a sick, apprehensive feeling settling in his gut as he realizes what’s happening; the meeting is over. Whatever happens now, Siris has already made his decision. “I can’t say I think your plan is smart,” Siris begins, as they walk together out of the courtyard and back through the garden’s winding paths. “But... I’d be lying if I said Charon isn’t a thorn in my side. They don’t have as much of a presence on Tribute as the UNSC, but they’ve been more aggressive lately about making inroads -- and frankly, I don’t need their weapons flooding the market, or the police taking their money instead of mine. So let’s make a deal. I’ve got some work available; help me out, and I’ll return the favour.”

“What kind of work?”

“The kind you’re very, very good at.”

“...I don’t do that anymore.”

Siris glances at him, a scarred eyebrow arched skyward in disbelief. “Mercenary work?”

“Killing.”

“Oh. Well, that’s up to you. If you can get it done cleanly, I won’t complain about a lack of body bags to collect.”

Even with that allowance, Locus hesitates. “Following other people’s orders is how I got in this mess. I’m not going to be your footsoldier.”

Siris’ laughter is instant and derisive. “Don’t flatter yourself, Ortez, I’m not interested in recruiting you. You don’t belong here -- and it would be an insult to both of us, besides. I need someone I know will get the job done, and even if you’re a selfish prick I can trust you to do that much. You’ve always had professional pride, if nothing else.” Siris stops walking and turns toward him. “I’ll put you up somewhere safe, get you outfitted. And when you’re done, you’ll get your money and your ship, and you’ll be free to make Charon’s life a living hell in whatever way you see fit. What do you say?”

A deal without strings attached had been too much to hope for, he supposes. He’s hesitant to accept such a carte blanche offer without knowing all the details upfront -- but without any leverage, he has no choice. He needs to take what he can get, and Siris knows it, or else he’ll probably be handed over to that bodyguard waiting for him at the gate.

He’s come this far. He’s willing to pay the price for his freedom.

“That would be very helpful,” says Locus. Siris extends a hand, and they shake on their agreement. “Thank you, Siris. I’m in your debt.”

“Yes, you are. I’m not doing you a favour, Sam. I’m helping you out of respect for our past friendship -- but only this once.” Siris’ hand tightens on his own, and then his voice lowers, falling soft and dark as the settling night as he issues a quiet warning: “You do my work, I’ll get you what you need. And then you will take your ship, you will get the fuck off this planet, and you will stay gone. Are we clear?”

Locus doesn’t know what he expects to find when he holds Siris’ gaze; some glimpse of the man he left in the clinic waiting room all those years ago, perhaps, the one who wouldn’t hesitate to chide him but was equally quick to lend a hand when something went wrong. But all he sees now in Siris’ cold eyes is a stranger, and he knows that if his old friend still exists in this world, he will never be allowed to see him again.

So when Locus says, “Understood,” it’s uttered with all the sombre finality of _goodbye_.

Siris leads him the rest of the way through the garden and toward the manor. Locus realizes when they emerge that they’re exiting through a different gate than the one he had entered through, identical to the other except for its location on the eastern side of the manor. Every step he takes on the stone stairs up to the gate leaves him feeling lighter, like he’s surfacing for air after being trapped underground, like he’s leaving a place he doesn’t belong and being sent back to where he does.

For the first time since Chorus, Locus thinks that maybe he can see a light on his horizon.

When they reach the front of the house the black sedan is still there, waiting to take him back into the city. Emmett is there is well, and when he sees the two of them approaching together, a disappointed expression crosses his face as he reaches into an inside pocket of his overcoat and produces Locus’ confiscated pistol. Siris takes the gun, knocks on the driver’s window and gives it to him when he rolls it down, along with instructions to hand it over when they arrive at their destination -- an address Locus doesn’t recognize but thinks is somewhere in the Wu family’s uptown territory.

“You’ll be in a hotel tonight,” Siris says to Locus, as he opens the back door for him to get in. “I’ll arrange accommodations for you starting tomorrow. My people will be in touch.”

Locus nods, but stands rooted to the spot, acutely aware that this will likely be the last time they ever see each other. He’s never been one for words and probably never will be, but the thought of leaving now without saying something fills him with a nameless dread that he knows will soon morph into regret. So he wets his lips and says, “Felix… always used to say you would choose your family over us eventually. But I don’t think you were wrong to do so.”

“I know I wasn’t,” says Siris coolly. But something flickers over his face, then, the slightest troubled crease of his brow that smooths away just as quickly before Locus can really decipher what it was. “I always knew what he would choose, too. It was you I wasn’t sure about.”

“I’m sorry, Mason.”

“It’s too late for apologies. If you really want to make things right, you’ll need to figure out how to do that on your own.” He nods toward the car. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”

Locus gets in, and Siris shuts the door behind him. As the car engine hums to life and the driver pulls them away from the house, he keeps his eyes fixed forward, resisting the urge to watch Siris and the home he’s made for himself shrink into the distance as they leave the estate grounds and head back toward the highway. And within minutes, they’ve travelled far enough that looking back is no longer an option.

It feels strange, he thinks, to finally close this chapter of his life, to have it be behind him and beyond his reach, even if the damage he helped cause would always linger. To know that some things won’t wait for him to take responsibility, that allowing himself to feel the guilt is insufficient penance for his sins. Whether he’s ready to move on or not, the decision to remove him from Siris’ life has already been made, and he has no choice but to accept it, and keep moving.

He turns this thoughts toward the work that awaits him tomorrow, still unsure of how to mourn one partner, much less two.

 

* * *

  


Isaac is exactly where he left him when Sam returns to the bathroom: draped over the side of the old ceramic tub with his head resting on his arms so he won’t fall over and drown if he loses consciousness again while alone. Sam had entered so quietly that he startles when he opens his eyes and realizes he’s there, causing him to sink lower into the water with an angry curse. “Fuck. Don’t _do_ that.” When Sam wordlessly hands him two pills and the ice pack he brought from the freezer, Isaac sighs and gingerly presses the latter against his bloodied and probably broken nose with a resigned, “Thanks.”

He’s covered in bruises down to his waist, where he soaks in water as hot as the uncooperative heating tank will provide, hoping to ease the ache of his injuries. Their assailants had beaten him badly in an attempt to draw Sam out of hiding; he’d listened to them do it over a confiscated earpiece. When Sam had failed to eliminate them all, the ones left alive had held him down and cut open his face, transforming it into a crude imitation of his old UNSC helmet. They’d been so engrossed in the torture they weren’t able to stop a bloody and barely conscious Isaac from finding a gun and killing all three of them.

They have two bounties they’re actively pursuing; it will take some time to determine which one knows they’re closing in and brought on the hired help to eliminate them. They’ll have to be more careful from now on.

While Isaac knocks back his painkillers and nurses his injuries, Sam finds a clean washcloth in a drawer and turns to the sink. He wets it and presses it cautiously against the raw, stinging lacerations forming an ‘x’ over the bridge of his nose, hissing through his teeth when his whole face flashes in pain from the contact. He pulls the cloth away long enough to see the cross-shaped smear of blood on cotton, folds it over, and then forces himself to do it again.

“We shouldn’t stay here long,” mumbles Isaac. Sam looks up and finds his reflection in the mirror, slumped bonelessly against the edge of the tub, blood still crusted on his face even as the water soaks away the rest of it. “They’ll be looking for us by morning.”

“Agreed,” says Sam, finding his voice at last. “I have a safehouse by the shipyards. We should head there for a while and lay low.”

“Fuck that, we need to get out of town. Off-planet would be even better.” Isaac gestures to his damaged body. “We killed a few, but whoever sent them must know we’re pretty fucked up ourselves. They won’t wait for us to regroup.”

Sam frowns at him in the mirror. “You want to run?”

“You _don’t_ ?” When he doesn’t respond, Isaac’s face falls. “You can’t be serious.”

“I won’t live in fear of petty criminals,” Sam growls. “We recover, find out who did it, and take the fight to them.”

“ _We_ ,” Isaac echoes flatly. “That’s nice. And what if _I_ don’t want to suicidally throw myself at people who want to kill me?”

“Then don’t. I’ll do it.”

“Oh, yeah, _great_ idea. Hey, if you wanted to get us killed so bad why didn’t you just let them do it when they were beating the shit out of me an hour ago? Would have saved everybody some time.”

“I’m starting to regret I didn’t.”

“Fuck you, too.”

Sam’s irritation gets the better of him and he throws the bloody washcloth at Isaac, causing him to let out an indignant yelp and hurl the ice pack back at him in retaliation. It goes wide and lands in the sink. “Asshole,” Isaac mutters under his breath. “Don’t act like you did me a favour, okay? You had the chance to get away. I didn’t ask for your help.”

His already volatile temper spikes hotter at the insinuation that Isaac apparently thinks so _little_ of him. “We’re partners,” Sam replies forcefully.

Isaac rolls his eyes. “Christ... Just because we fucked once or twice doesn’t mean--”

“We’re _partners_ ,” he says again, looming over him with his fists curled tight at his sides, seething with resentment that he has to say it out loud, that he doesn’t _get_ it. “If _one_ of us dies, we _both_ die.”

His eyes widen just slightly; that, at last, seems to have reached him. Isaac’s face goes still as he stares up at him under the dim bathroom light, the way Sam had looked at him a lifetime ago beneath clouds set ablaze by burning ships and cannon fire. No matter how much time passes they’ll never stop being those people -- the fighters, the survivors, the last two left alive. And if one of them forgets who they are, the other will be there, eyes full of vicious determination, reminding him that their lives depend on each other above all else.

Sam abruptly turns away, his chest and lungs tight like he’s suffocating from a combination of rage and the bathroom’s humidity -- but when he does, Isaac seizes his arm and stops him from leaving. He could break free, if he wanted, but instead he stands there and lets the water droplets from Isaac’s hand trickle down his forearm and through his fingers. And he doesn’t resist when Isaac pulls, firmly, drawing him back until he has to bend down and face him or lose his balance and fall in. Isaac rises to his knees in the water to meet him and raises his hands to his face, and then his mouth is on his, rough and insistent, and Sam returns the kiss with all the fury and frustration he can’t direct at the people who hurt them. Whenever Isaac demands him, it’s usually like this -- after a fight, when their blood is still racing and tensions are high and it’s either this or they kill each other. An outlet for the brutality they want to inflict on each other and on their enemies, but can’t just yet.

Isaac breaks the kiss with a ragged exhalation of breath, leaving the barest sliver of space between them. They stay like that a moment, noses pressed together in spite of their injuries, breathing each other’s air. There’s no universe where they don’t taste blood on each other’s lips when they do this, no lifetime where the violence that surges through their veins doesn’t push them to these dizzying highs together. This is them stripped down to their barest form; the two of them, alone, united against everyone stupid or unfortunate enough to get in their way.

Whatever emotion had overtaken Isaac in that moment is undetectable when he finally pulls back far enough for Sam to see his face. If he had managed to catch him off-guard with the reminder of who they are and where they came from, all evidence of it is gone now, replaced by a smirk that Isaac probably wants to be sarcastic, but Sam thinks may be just a little bit fond. “It looks good on you,” he says, dragging his thumb underneath the wound marring his cheek.

Pain blossoms along the path his finger takes, but Sam doesn’t react or respond to it. What he does do is put his hand on the back of Isaac’s head and drag him in again, foregoing the need for words so he doesn’t have to say what he’s thinking -- that Isaac, too, is at his best like this, beaten, exhausted, and somehow still fighting.

 

* * *

 

  
_Only one of you needs the other to survive,_ the AI had said.

For so long, Locus never would have believed that could be true. Their need was reciprocal; he and Felix were one. They watched over each other, moved in tandem -- never quite two parts of a whole, but extensions of each other built up over their own weak points, reinforcing all the crumbling edges that had been eroded by the tide of war. A bullet lodged in one of them was an injury swiftly punished by the other, with as much prejudice as if he had suffered it himself. It isn’t that Locus ever mistook that passion for loyalty or affection; Felix loved and was loyal to only himself and never claimed otherwise, not even when they were -- whatever they’d been. It was just how they lived: by keeping the other alive. Two people, united in purpose, partners for so long that a wound inflicted on one of them was an assault on them both, that one of them dying meant the other wouldn’t be far behind.

Mutually assured destruction.

(Felix would have called it _romantic_ , if they’d ever actually discussed it.)

He stands now on the cliff edge on the far side of the harbour, where Casbah is little more than a distant glow on the early morning horizon. _A’rynasea_ , the ship he received from Siris, sits on the rocks nearby, ready and waiting to take him wherever he needs to go. The armor he wears, too, is new -- a last gift he was surprised to find inside the ship when it had been delivered to him. His business with Siris is concluded; the only part of their bargain remaining is for him to leave Tribute and never return, but now he stands overlooking the city where so much has transpired and finds the thought of leaving this place behind oddly painful.

 _All change comes with its own kind of grief attached._ He supposes this is no different.

In his hands is Felix’s helmet. His decryption attempts in the weeks spent in Siris’ employ had produced no results. Whatever information is locked away inside, whatever secrets Felix managed to keep even from him, went with him to his grave. He could find someone more skilled than him to unlock it, perhaps -- given enough time and resources, nothing can be kept secret forever -- but if he’s going to move forward, he can’t do it while Felix’s presence still hangs over him like a shroud. If he carries the past around with him its weight will drag him down to a place he may never crawl out of again. It’s nothing but a reminder of the pain they inflicted, on each other, on countless other people, and he can’t atone for those sins while depending on Felix’s help in any form -- or by holding him responsible for them.

Before he can change his mind, he tosses the helmet over the side of the cliff and watches it fly past the rocks and into the icy black water below. The elements will short out the electronics and wear the frame down to uselessness soon enough -- and then nothing will be left of Felix except what Locus remembers.

And what he remembers is… fractured. Their time together has seen them take winding, dangerous, corrupting paths, and looking back on it he wonders who exactly he should be grieving: Gates, the squadmate who’d saved his life? Isaac, the companion who’d kept his gun trained outward instead of on himself? Or Felix, the partner whose avarice had extended to Locus as much as it had to money? The trinity, he supposes; three persons in one nature. To mourn one is to mourn him in his entirety.

But that will take time to sort through -- and if he’s lucky, Locus will have enough of it to get there eventually.

He boards _A’rynasea_ and leaves Tribute behind for good, taking with him only what he needs to survive.


End file.
